


But I’m Still Here (Growing So Old)

by ronsparkyspeirs



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Future Fic, Light Angst, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 08:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20618081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronsparkyspeirs/pseuds/ronsparkyspeirs
Summary: Daryl reminisces and goes back to the place where everything started.





	But I’m Still Here (Growing So Old)

The last time he sees her she's radiant. Clean and pale and that blonde hair of hers is practically glowing, she's ephemeral and he snorts in amusement when he thinks of what Merle would say if he heard him describing her in that way. But she is, a creature so beautiful that for a moment he doesn't think she's real, a figment of his imagination perhaps. 

He thinks that maybe he made her up, that those weeks spent in the forest never happened because surely something so beautiful can't exist in this world. 

Her voice is just as sweet as he remembers too, it soothes his dusty heart and he breathes in relief when she starts to make her way to him. The first real breath he's taken in weeks.

He doesn't want to think of what happened next, he tries telling himself that it didn't happen, he tries to will her back to life. Drops to his knees beside her and begs and cries and begs some more. 

He doesn't even care that everyone is watching. 

That’s the last time he sees her and she's beautiful. 

The days drag on, which turn to weeks, to months, to  _ years.  _ It’s a special kind of hell because he can never forget her. He tries hard, he tries to scrub the memory of her from his brain but it never. Fucking. Works. 

_ There are still good people, Daryl.  _

_ You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone.  _

She speaks to him in a million different ways, and it never gets any better. 

Daryl doesn’t realize how much he misses Beth until one day he can’t remember what she looked like. He sees her blonde hair shining in the sunlight, he recalls how the soft tendrils stuck to the skin of her slender neck as the day wore on, he remembers her pale shoulders, reddened by the sun. He can see her ponytail, bobbing up and down as she ran in front of him, the little braid swinging in time. But Daryl can’t remember her smile, her nose, the shape of her eyes, he knows they were blue but were there tiny flecks of green in them? Sometimes he looks at Maggie and thinks he can see Beth in her face but his brain instinctively knows that’s wrong. 

Beth was softness and light and sparkly bracelets on her wrist. Daryl can spend entire afternoons trying to remember what she looked like, and he tries to remember the little details but he can’t. He tries remembering the sound of her voice but he’s unable to, and that somehow breaks his heart all over again. 

He’s pushing sixty and she’s always going to be young, a sweet girl of nineteen. It makes him regret trying to wish her memory away, he realizes what a shitty thing for him to do that had been. 

Then one day he gets a little cough, he thinks it might be a cold at first, but as the weeks progress, it gets worse. Gets harder to breathe, even when he’s not doing much. He finally relents and goes to see the doctor, the only one around for miles. 

“It’s probably emphysema, but without being able to do the proper testing we won’t know for sure.” The doctor tells him and Daryl wants to laugh, the world threw everything it could at him from birth, including the apocalypse, and he survived through it all, only to be taken out by some lung disease. 

He only tells Rick. 

“‘M dyin,’” he says, “Doctor said it’s probably emphysema, got a couple of years left, maybe,” he shrugs because there’s worse ways to die in this new world. 

There’s tears in Rick’s eyes when he turns to look at him, there’s a lot more lines around his face too, hair gone completely gray, a jagged scar running from his eyebrow down to his jaw, he would be unrecognizable if it wasn’t for the same steely, gaze he’s always had.

Rick clears his throat, “Y’need anything?” 

Daryl begins shaking his head, but then a thought pops into his head, something completely crazy that is a very bad idea but if he could do anything in the world, it would be that. 

“Yeah, there’s somethin’ I want, maybe could have Carl help,” he says, “I wanna find the Greene farm.” 

There’s a couple of seconds where Rick just blinks at him, silently. He knows it sounds irrational but it’s something he’s thought of for years, if he’s being honest. Started the moment he began to forget what Beth looked like. He thinks the farm might still be there, it was so far out of the way he’s pretty sure no people could have found it. It may not even be standing anymore, but if it is, there must be a picture of her still left, somewhere in that white house. 

He wants to see her room. 

Rick looks like he wants to cry again, but all he does is ask, “Still?” 

Daryl doesn’t have to ask what he means, he knows Rick is talking about Beth. “Always,” he responds. 

Rick nods, lets him know he’ll tell Carl. But Daryl makes sure to tell him not to say a word to anyone else, this is private, just for him. 

* * *

A couple of days later, Carl finds him. Tall and lean like his daddy, but hair long like Daryl’s, a man in every sense of the word, with his missing eye and easy smile, he’s had admirers since he turned seventeen, a fact that Daryl always teased him about. 

Carl looks at him the same way his father did, with a gaze made out of steel, but still soft somehow, “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“Ain’t nothing to be sorry about.” 

And then Carl tells him he’ll go, accompany him on this trip that sounds like a bad idea. There are still bad people around, they encounter them every so often, and the walkers have thinned out considerably but a long trip without a vehicle was risky even before the turn. He thinks about the people that went West and just how terrible their stories sometimes ended. 

A couple of days later they set off on their trip. Rick tells them to take a car, something to make the trip easier, and Daryl relents because he ain’t so young anymore and yeah, resources are very limited, but he doesn’t think his body could take a couple days trip by horse. 

It only takes them a day and a half to find the area where he remembers the farm might still be. The woods have gotten wild and there’s not much landmarks to go by, but Daryl has never needed any of that, and besides, that afternoon under the hot sun they find what they’re looking for. 

The house still stands. 

Half taken over by grass and plants and flowers and it looks more like something from a movie than a real house but it’s been almost twenty years. He thinks it’s kind of incredible it’s still standing at all. 

“You want me to go first?” Carl asks, and Daryl shakes his head. 

“We’ll go in together, haven’t seen a walker for miles.” 

Carl nods and they trudge up the porch, the grass is overgrown up to their thighs but they don’t hear anything but the birds in the trees. The front door is open and one of the front windows is broken, a curtain still blowing in the breeze. 

They still go through the same routine they’ve been following for years, Carl bangs on the door and Daryl lets out a low whistle, just in case there’s something else inside but after a couple of seconds nothing comes to greet them. They make their way inside and aside from the dust and water damage, it’s like someone has turned the house into a time capsule. 

It doesn’t look like any people have come by in all the years and everything is still as it was the night they had to flee. 

“Kinda creepy, isn’t it?” Carl asks, “doesn’t seem like anyone else has been around.” 

“The herd must have hung around for a while, scared off any people nearby,” Daryl responds. 

And he’s not going to think about how the house is still standing, or how the bedrooms upstairs are probably in even better condition, and he’s definitely not going to think about how it’s like some type of miracle, because Daryl doesn’t believe in that type of shit. 

Carl walks ahead, a little smile on his face, and Daryl trails behind him. 

“You wanted to take pictures, right?” the younger man asks, and Daryl hadn’t told him much of his little mission but Carl has always been smart, intuitive, it’s why he adapted so well to this world. 

He nods and Carl keeps talking, “It’ll be nice, for Hershel to know his grandparents, and to know Beth,” he pauses, grins and pushes his hair away from his face, “Y’know Judith still has that picture of mom and dad and me in her room?” 

“I’ve seen it.” 

“It’ll be nice for you too,” Carl said, softly, like he thinks Daryl might break or something and it doesn’t annoy him like it might have once upon a time. He honestly doesn’t know what’ll happen when he goes upstairs to  _ her  _ room, he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he sees her face staring back at him through a dusty picture frame. 

Daryl chews on his lip and nods his head towards the stairs. He remembers there had been framed pictures going up the staircase, big and small, baby pictures and a picture of Annette’s parents, or so Maggie had told him before they left. 

Carl pulls out a bag from his backpack, ready to stash anything in there, the two of them start the trek up the stairs, pausing to take frames off the wall. Carl laughs and points to a picture, it’s of a woman with honey blonde hair, a tow-headed child in her lap, wearing only a diaper and a pink bow on her head. The woman is laughing and the baby looks to be mid shout, the kind babes make when they get excited. 

“That must be Beth,” Carl says, and Daryl picks the picture from the wall and without a word dumps it into the tote bag Carl carries over his shoulder. 

There’s another picture of the entire family, Maggie must have been in high school, her expression sullen, the brother Daryl never met, Shawn, with his arm around a young Beth. She grins at the camera and has her arms wrapped around his neck. Daryl sighs, he never knew that girl. But he takes it, Maggie will be happy. 

They finally make their way up to the second floor, they split up and Daryl never went in her room when they were living at the farm but a couple of times he saw her coming out. Early mornings where he didn’t even spare her a second glance. The door is not shut all the way close so he nudges it open with his shoulder. He stands at the doorway and has to take a deep breath, he feels that itching at the back of his throat, the burning behind his eyes and he has to rub his hand over his weathered face. He didn’t come here to mourn, he’s been done with all that for years now. 

He steps inside and like downstairs, the room is just the way she left it. The bed is made but there’s a hairbrush lying by her pillow, a set of pajamas on a chair near the window, a couple of plastic bracelets on the nightstand. 

There’s a vanity and he walks towards it, he can see the pictures that she taped to the mirror, framed ones on the table. These are closer to the girl he knew. They were probably taken in the year leading up to The Turn. She looks young and just as pretty as he knew she was. But It’s like a punch in the gut, seeing her again, she stayed young and he grew old, she’ll be that way forever and he’ll turn to dust in some grave dug by his friends. 

He wishes he could hear her. He wishes there were tapes or cassettes. He knows they probably exist in a cellphone that will never turn on again, so he stops thinking about it. He’ll take what he can get. 

And he stares at the pictures. Sussing out which one he wants for himself. A lot of them are with friends, girls and boys, there’s a couple with that little boyfriend she used to have. There’s one of her at the beach with her mom, both under a huge colorful umbrella, smiling hard at whoever’s taking the photograph. His fingers touch perfume bottles on the table, pink and delicate little things, there’s makeup too, not much but enough to remember that she was only sixteen when her world turned upside down. 

He turns back to the pictures and there, tucked in a corner, he sees the one he wants. 

It’s of Beth by herself, sitting on the front porch steps. She looks the most like she did the last time he saw her, hair in a ponytail and a pastel colored cardigan over her shoulders. She’s wearing a dress underneath but her smile is the same. 

_ I’m gonna be gone one day.  _

He shuts his eyes because it’s not fair. Why is he still here when she had her whole life ahead of her. 

He takes the picture and goes to sit on her bed, he can pretend she’s just gone downstairs to get him something to drink. Her bed is soft and for a moment he thinks of laying back, going to sleep and telling Carl to go back without him. 

His elbows fall to his thighs and he can’t stop looking at her. All the what ifs are what really get to him. He snorts, amused at himself, he’s an old man still pining over a girl that died decades ago.  _ Christ, he must really be losing it.  _

That’s how Carl finds him, a smile on his face as he strokes the photograph with his thumb, “You alright?” he asks and Daryl almost laughs, but he nods instead. 

“Find anythin’ interestin’?” 

Carl shakes his head, “Nothing we don’t already have, except the pictures.” 

“We should head back,” Daryl responds, his voice rough. 

“You sure, you don’t want to—-“ Carl trails off, gesturing towards the room in general. 

Daryl gives him a blank stare in return, he gets what Carl is saying but they’ve been inside the house for long enough. In a way it does seem like he should take in the moment, maybe say a couple of words, even if they stay inside his head but it ain’t right. He didn’t know the girl that this room belonged to, those pictures on the vanity ain’t his memories. He knew her when she was a little bit older and a whole lot more grown up. If they stay any longer it’ll start feeling like they’re intruding on something, this ain’t their home, never was and it seems wrong being there without an invite. 

“You don’t want the rest?” Carl asks him, pointing to the vanity. 

“Nah, c’mon, we should get outta here.” 

Silently they make their way downstairs. It’s still relatively bright outside and Daryl thinks they could probably drive through the night just to get back home early. Outside Carl pauses, he turns back to look at the house and then his gaze falls on Daryl. 

“Listen, I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but y’sure you’re okay? I mean, it’s been  _ twenty years _ , and you still think about her—“ he shakes his head, and it’s not in a mean way, not even meant to make Daryl uncomfortable but he understands. It ain’t his fault Beth managed to worm her way into his heart and stay there. 

“This,” Daryl tells him, gesturing to the house in general, “this don’t mean nothin,’ she ain’t here anymore,” he pauses, trying to make the words right so Carl understands. 

“She’s somewhere out there,” he says, pointing towards the woods, “she’s still out there, maybe she’s waitin’ for me, maybe I’m still out there too,” he says shrugging and letting out a little huff of air that might sound like a laugh if you knew him well, “I just wanted to see her face again, y’understand?” 

Carl stays silent, and maybe nothing Daryl says make any lick of sense but finally he gives a nod, purses his lips, “Yeah, I understand.” 

Daryl gives him another firm nod, and together they walk back to their car and away from the house that Beth once lived in. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote that... 
> 
> I don’t care much for timelines but this is set approximately twenty years after season 2. 
> 
> Locket- Crumb


End file.
